Friendly ao3 enjoyer

Listening to Mitski, Hozier, Chappell, The Last Dinner Party, and being obnoxious about it

[lesbiscotti]

This came to me in a fever dream <3

[lesbiscotti]

Guys do we think Nezha is the type of toxic man who names his first child after his doomed situationship? I do, at least.

[thedemoninyourcloset]

Happy Jedtavius month everyone!!

Literally rose from the dead to make this announcement like I do every year

[lesbiscotti]

I hope that Rin gets to smite every reader who acts like her 💕👍✨VOLUNTARY✨👍💕 hysterectomy was the most tragic thing that happened to her in the series

[lesbiscotti]

Guys I just finished the Burning God and what the fuck was that ending?

Spoilers of course

So I get that Rin was always going to go insane. From book 1 she’s characterized as more than a little unstable, she burns her arm to have the grit to study. The phoenix was always going to turn her into a killing machine because the phoenix symbolizes the corrupting force of war. Not to mention it was obvious she was going to kill herself to end a battle the same way Altan did at the end of book 1

But the rest of the endings themes just seem so antithetical to RF Kuangs work. The sobering ending is that colonization continues; Nikan is going to sign the same unequal treaties to survive, it’s going to have its religion taken away, they’ll all be second class citizens to the Hesperians, and Nezha will be a collaborator just trying to make things marginally better while being tortured by their priests. Is that really the theme? That there’s no escape to colonization and war? I guess I expected something a little more bittersweet after reading Victoires epilogue in Babel, the idea that people can still resist.

Genuinely looking for peoples thoughts on this. How did you interpret the allegories and themes of this ending?

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[lesbiscotti]

Close enough, welcome back my immortal!!

[doityourselfbombs]

every day I have to make decisions

[mlarayoukai-archive]

Hiii fandom girlie do you want to explain why you are drawing/writing the dark skinned man as dominant over his lighter skinned partner when that doesn't fit his personality at all. The class is waiting for your answer

[lesbiscotti]

Hiiii fandom girlie can you also explain why you are drawing/writing him as hypersexual when that doesn’t fit his character? Can you explain why you’re drawing/writing him as stupid when he was just written with a sense of humour in canon? The class is really interested in what motivated that decision.

[lesbiscotti]

So I was scrolling yesterday and found out the US leader is hosting this thing called the Patriot Games. Basically it’s going to be this big athletic competition where two kids (guy and girl) represent their state in an athletic competition. Of course, every single reaction to that information from Americans was “oh my god?? We’re going into the Hunger Games??” Which really bothered me because it showed just an utter lack of literacy and understanding.

First of all, the Hunger Games is not a dystopia because it’s called the Title Games and there are two kids who go to compete in it. So when people freak out as a result, they’re not freaking out over anything substantive. What the book IS actually about is the extent of US consumption. It parodies how US Americans (and to that extent the greater Global North) are so callous in their consumption and extraction of goods and resources from the Global South that they can overlook pretty much any and all human right violations, or be convinced that these people deserve to be hurt. The Hunger Games will never happen in the US, because it’s already happening in SHEIN sweatshops.

Now, I don’t want your takeaway from my post to be “this person thinks the Patriot Games aren’t dystopian” because I think they are, but for completely different reasons. When this was first announced, it was emphasized that the people competing are The Best from every state. That’s going to become a symbol of eugenics very quickly. Everyone will be made to aspire to these people, and I’m sure many of them will become right-wing grifters and pundits to talk about how Genetically Special they are. At the same time, trans people will automatically be excluded. To that effect, I’m guessing every POC who wants to compete will be transvestigated the way Imane Khalif was back in 2024.

So overall, please don’t let your reaction to this new thing be “omg Title Games.” Have some critical thoughts on it, and assess it for what it really is.

[iwilleatyourenglish]

stop sending me asks having tantrums because i think it's weird Sean Baker, a man who has repeatedly been found to have right wing leanings, keeps making movies about sex workers suffering.

it's embarrassing that you're angry a woman asked, "why does this man, who has been repeatedly caught following right wing propaganda accounts, want to tell stories about the agony of people he clearly doesn't give a fuck about in real life?"

[iwilleatyourenglish]

"you're complaining because he glamorizes sex work" is an accusation i've gotten twice and i'd really love to know where i ever said that since he actually portrays sex work as so horrific that it often feels like fear mongering

[iwilleatyourenglish]

you can write stories about experiences that differ wildly from your own

but i'm not gonna pretend Tangerine, a film about a black trans sex worker being abused, doesn't feel slimy when you learn it was made by a straight white dude from money who 1) followed libs of tiktok and IDF babes and 2) won't stop making films about sex workers being abused

[iwilleatyourenglish]

five.

he has made at least FIVE films about sex workers struggling.

[lesbiscotti]

The tragedy of art is how it’s inaccessible to those who should tell it. We SHOULD hear stories about the sex work industry, how it abuses women and how we can escape it and showing the enduring strength of survivors, told by survivors. Unfortunately, survivors of the industry don’t have the capital or networks to make that art happen. You know who does? A guy who’s parents sent him to a private high school that cost $59,000 in an 80% white town

[byjove]

I have absolutely no empathy for men who are emphatic about having ‘a big family’ and willing to risk their wife’s health and/or leave her if she struggles with her pregnancies or has secondary infertility. I just don’t. Especially religious quiverfull freaks. If you think it can be God’s will for you to have 15 children, it can also be God’s will for you to have no children, or just one. You’re just a freak with a breeding fetish if you use that bullshit to justify impregnating your wife 10+ times but would be willing to leave her if she couldn’t conceive.

[lesbiscotti]

I’ve never met someone like this irl but I am unfortunately aware they exist, and I think it goes to show some very strong gendered differences in how we see families. As a woman, three kids would be a big family for me. That’s three people to budget for, three people to take care of, three people to understand, three people to correct when they make mistakes. Ten people? No. There’s no way you can give them a remotely good childhood, because it would be so difficult to build a substantive connection with ten whole people, not to mention the daily life of caring and raising and correcting and picking up after them. And if someone (who based on their gender expects to be a ‘breadwinner’) wants 10 kids, that sounds like they picked a number of social trophies to prove something about how ‘successful’ they are rather than actually wanting to commit to all aspects of those people.

[elumish]

I just saw a post where one of the comments was a woman saying that they don't care about the POV or internal life of female characters in general, and I didn't want to reblog that post because I didn't want to go after that specific person, but I did want to say:

If that is how you feel (regardless of what gender you are), if every time you read a female character (but only a female character) you think, ugh I don't care about them, they're so boring, female characters never have internal lives worth reading about, you need work on that.

I'm serious. Figure out what your hangup is, reevaluate how you're approaching stories, maybe get some therapy or talk to someone about it if you need to, and figure out how to get past your dismissal of female POVs as being worth reaing.

Because whatever problem you have with the internal lives or POVs of female characters, it's an issue you also have with women. It's not like female characters are somehow universally written as so fundamentally different from real women that everything you find so dull or shallow or annoying or uninteresting in those female characters is fictionalized--and, it's not like female characters are somehow universally written as so fundamentally different from male characters that everything you find so shallow or dull or annoying or uninteresting in those female characters isn't also present in those male characters in some very similar way.

And if your excuse is that men can't write women--read more things written by women. (Some men can write women well, but you should read things written by women anyway.)

Tl;dr: If you find yourself looking at every female character you read, or every Black character, or every disabled character, etc. and thinking that somehow none of them quite live up to the male/white/abled characters that you are used to reading, that's something you need to work on.

[lesbiscotti]

This all comes back to the idea that some stories can be universally relatable (ie; better and more enjoyable to consume) than others based on where a character lies in imposed social hierarchies (patriarchy, racism, ableism, etc). I remember proposing The Song of Achilles to a high school book club, and one girl turned it down because “she couldn’t find gay men relatable.” Meanwhile as a lesbian, I’m obliged to find the stories of men and straight people enjoyable. And I do! But it irks me that there’s no inverse obligation for people with privilege to enjoy the stories of the marginalised

[corseque]

I'm reading this book and it's apparently supposed to be about a teen vaguely fantasy princess starting out "weak" and becoming "strong" and I'm like, wow, that sounds like a great story, can't wait for it

and then I listen to the story (it's an audiobook) and the transformation implies that "strength" means the willingness to yell expletives at extremely powerful kings in a very politically (and otherwise) suicidal way that accomplishes nothing except venting personal frustrations AND closes many doors on things you could accomplish with a king who isn't completely aware that you despise him

being "strong" is yelling and being sassy... and being "weak" is the ability to hold any thoughts to yourself at all in a very dangerous situation where being offensive could kill you

I swear that I'm living on another planet or something, like there's something cathartic about being a sassy princess or whatever the fuck this trend is, sure, but I pine for the kind of protagonist who understands politics and becomes strong through making people she privately despises love her, or manipulating or being decietful when lives are on the line. There's nothing wrong with lying!! Lying is fun!!!

idk I just miss the kind of scenes in books where the main character thinks things over AND THEN THINKS THINGS OVER AGAIN and maybe even a third time from different angles before they say or do anything, especially when it's as precarious a political situation as meeting a king in the king's own land. I can't get over how every fantasy protagonist feels American and feels down deep in her bones that she has the god-given (eagle screech) right to Free Speech it's so funny to me. This is a monarchy. The king will behead you. Even if he has the whim to NOT behead you, it's probably a bad idea to be rude to him. I don't care how evil he is. You're so stupid. Was it worth it? You can be very clear within the protagonist's head how the protagonist really feels, and you can have the protagonist say something she doesn't actually feel! It's interesting and fun!!

"I guess the words in my head just come out of my mouth, oops" maybe stop that!! you mean to tell me that you have been trained as a princess, which usually involves training as a hostess and in social graces and politeness as basically a lifelong foreign dignitary and yet you seem to understand the nuances of social interaction about as well as a spoiled, rumpled American college girl dumped out of her dorm room into the same situation? Are these all secretly portal fantasies? Why are you acting like this?

I just don't get it!!!!!

[lesbiscotti]

Thank you for putting this to words! You’re so right that there’s a USAmerican-ness to this trope, the idea that being Mean and Sassy will Gotcha the villain.

[asteriis]

guys.

[lesbiscotti]

SPOILERS FOR RECENT CHAPTERS

I think the company is going to blind Hikaru. First of all, we know Tanaka is blind and can’t see without his company issued glasses. We also know that anomalies rely on senses to lock in on their targets, either through hearing (with Asako) or through sight (how Hikaru accidentally hurt the little girl when he was trying to escape the hole). We also know that the company has said Hikaru is going to help them of his own will, but that seems suspicious!! They’re definitely going to create leverage over him to force him to help. Not to mention how the author has been doodling all these drawings of people without their eyes!

So basically, the company will blind Hikaru to make him more docile and force him to comply with what they want from him, and possibly Yoshiki will give up half of his eyesight to truly mix with Hikaru and heal him.

[boundlessdreamergirl]

this is a supernatural horror anime and yet this 10 seconds clip is way more horrifying and spine chilling than the entire show. kaoru's a child for god's sake and yoshiki is a gay closeted teenager who's in love with his dead best friend who isn't really dead. accurate portrayal of how patriarchal hegemony bleeds through every social interaction. those words are way more violent than any physical altercation can ever be. as a queer person this scene for me is honestly is nightmare inducing. no matter how proud and accepting i am of my identity, sitting with homophobic bunch of idiots makes my palms grow sweaty, my heart rate spikes and ears start ringing. words can't describe how bad i feel for yoshiki and kaoru. poor babies.

[identitty-dickruption]

the amount of ableism directed towards people with allergies is insane. like quite frankly. why the fuck are you going out of your way to give someone an allergic reaction? why do people spend so much energy whinging about there being food options for someone with an allergy? “boohoo if I’m not allowed to eat nuts in a public place you’re violating my rights” well you’re violating the right for people with nut allergies to be able to live healthy lives so what now. it seriously shouldn’t be this hard

[lesbiscotti]

Imagine you’re starting work at a chemical manufacturing plant and you ask the owner which rooms you can enter, and which ones are unsafe and risk lung damage and they go “well we can’t guarantee any of the rooms are 100% safe :)” you say “what. I feel like you, as the owner of this plant, should know exactly what’s happening with the toxic chemicals” and they say “well by law I have to say that I can’t guarantee you won’t get lung cancer by working here.” And you say “that’s bullshit because the last three factories i worked at could identify which rooms were safe and which ones weren’t, so it sounds like you care more about winning a court case after I die than actually protecting me to begin with.”

And that’s what it’s like trying to eat at restaurants with anaphylactic allergies.

[rosalesbeausderholle]

One thing that worries me about the use of AI is whether or not it can worsen people's dementia and alzheimer's in the future. When my grandmother was first diagnosed, we got her math activity books. Now, my grandmother never had a formal education, but we did our best to keep her sharp, get her to do math and writing activity books, sudokus, playing board games that required some level of strategizing with her. Her family is prone to alzheimer's and dementia (both her siblings had it and deteriorated very very very quickly, which yeah, scares the shit out of me being her granddaughter) but she was the one whose mind lasted the longest, she only passed away two years ago, at 88, ten whole years after her initial diagnosis and sure, she had forgotten things, recipes and where she put her glasses and appointments, but she never forgot any of us, ten whole years in, she still remembered us. Now, this may have been luck, but doctors always said the constant mental work + companionship + medicine helped her a lot. So I'm thinking, these people who are now relying on AI for everything, from email-writing to thinking what's for dinner to casual conversations, I've even seen people rely on it to calculate what time they should leave their house if they need to be at a place at a specific time and their commute lasts X number of minutes. As if that's not... the simplest math operation possible? You shouldn't even need a calculator for that!!! Idk I don't know how long it'll take us to see the effects of this + exposure to brain-rotting short form content that is completely meaningless + people addicted to right-wing conspiracy style media. Idk I'm very worried. Please, read, read complicated books! Take up a book on philosophy and try to decipher it and make your own opinions on it, please buy a maths activity book and relearn how to do math, please get a hobby that involves lots of thinking and concentrating. PLEASE!!!

[lesbiscotti]

It does impact your memory! I saw a study (I forget where, but it was an actual scientific paper, not an opinion article) that students using AI to do coursework have far worse memory retention of what they’ve done compared to students who used digital resources or just their own knowledge. If you’re a student reading this, please don’t use AI in school for your own sake!! The goal of school is to learn, and you won’t be able to learn as much if AI does components of your work for you!!